Uk athletes invading USA Colleges in Aug 08.

makes sense. all the smart brits left england years ago to come here. just history repeating itself.

looks to be a good year for the teams involved.

Did they give names?

Already there's a quite a few Butler: Andy Baker, Tommy Davies, Darren Gauson, Sam Jacobs

Oklahoma State: Dan Watts, Matt Barnes-Smith

Tulsa: John Beattie, Lewis Timmins

New Mexico: Matt Ashton, Lee Emmanuel

Proctor at Boston, still some at Florida State?

So far the people going out there are:

New Mexco: Rory Fraser & david Bishop.

Providence: Lee Carey (4 years)

Iona: Luke Cragg

Butler: Joe McDonald, Steve Lisgo, Rob Mullett, Tom Boardman, Kris Gauson.

* Gauson & Jacobs both finsih Butler this year. So basically the Butler will be the 5 above, and Baker, Davies + a couple of decent americans i assume.

**Big move by Butler as that is a lot of Brits, they should have a VERY strong team this year as all these runners are very talented and is a massive coup by the head coach to get them all. Big things from Butler this year i think.

Florida State: *Not sure on the name but know it's a pretty good talent.

Lamar: Matt Wood.

You can also add Chris Hart to the list of athletes already out in the states.

Some great transfers and epect big things from these guys, just look at how much Baker has improved at butler so far. He wouldn't look out of place at oregon after his AJ Acosta scalp in that 13.50 5K race.

Adding to that:

Stony Brook: Alex Felce

Iowa: Richard Newton

McNeese: Micheal Dyer

Tulsa: Lewis Timmins

Looks like some good moves for both parties. Everyone likes to see 18 year olds developed over 5 years but it does help the team if they can bring in a 21 year old or two who's already pretty good and this can only really be done with transfer students from abroad as American students tranfering is quite the rareity.

Anyone know who the guy is thats going to Florida state?

What are Lee Carey's PR's?

My best friend is headed to Providence on a half scholarship and I'm wondering how good the foreign recruits are. I already know about the NZ guy who ran at Arcadia (Shannon), his 3k PR (I wanna say 8:06) is filthy. Can anybody confirm performances?

his PR's are good, with an 8.12 3k, but his 1500m and 5k pb's are a bit behind the 3k probably due to a few injury/illness hampered track seasons.

someone said that he was "best in the UK at his age by some margin" - not sure how big a margin it actually is, with David Forrester a year younger and beating Carey in the European XC champs and having a PR of 3.47 from last year over 1500. some may argue that Forrester is of a higher calibre although over the longer cross country I would give Carey the edge for sure.

good luck to him!

In regards to the Lee Carey comment, the guy is a massive massive talent and is likely to totally smash his PBs when he gets on to the track. he has a slight achilles injury at present which requires a very minor op to scrape out all the crap. He actually ran the english national xcountry with the injury and won comfortably so this shows how good he is. He is trying to get it all cleared up so he is ready to go when he hits the states which is a sensible move i think.

He is the best u20 Britain had and is head and shoulders above the other runners his age in britain. A massive coup for Providence and he could arguably have gone to a much bigger college if he fancied it but Providence seemed perfect when he visited. Expect massive things from him over the next few years, without bragging i think he has the sort of ability to win a NCAA xcountry title if he is pushed in training. Would also be good to mention he trains a lot on his own at present.

UK wrote:

Some great transfers and epect big things from these guys, just look at how much Baker has improved at butler so far. He wouldn't look out of place at oregon after his AJ Acosta scalp in that 13.50 5K race.

This is slightly deceptive as baker didnt concentrate on the 5000 last year in the Uk. I'm sure if he had of he would have run very well, and would still be running as quick as he is now in the states but his actual improvement would be far smaller!

Does he talk about himself in the third person a lot too?

I tend to diagree there, his changing etc has changed a lot since being at Butler. he now does all of his training in singles compared to the training he did whilst at loughboror in the UK. The climate is different which has no doubt aided his running. he ran a few 5ks in England but since he has moved to the states he has just kept improving...i have doubts he would have accomplished the times/performances he is putting together regularly now if he was still in the UK. Juts look ta the other guys..Timmins and Beattie are good examples of how much you can improve in the states.

Going back to that point you highlighted though. I do believe Baker could fit into the Oregon team. He beat AJ Acosta with an awesome finish. If you look at all the hype surrounding Acosta you have to think baker should get just as much if not more based on his recent dramatic improvements in times etc. I also think he will just keep knocking those times to bits over the next season and will arguably be destroying Acosta by next summer/xcountry season. he should be in the Oregon team without a doubt.

13 posts and no one has mentioned all these foreigners taking scholarships from our hard working American kids. Must be because they're our British brothers.

Its good to see that Franklin, former of Butler, now of New Mexico is continuing his methods of developing no Americans and recruiting only English runners coming to graduate school.

Don't be such haters. You should be pleased that Schools in the states are getting runners of these standards coming over. This year is going to see a massive increase in Brits coming over so i wouldn't be suprsed to see a few of them finishing very highly in the NCAA's over the next couple of years. A few of them are outstanding talents who arguably are going to be massive out there with the chance to focus solely on running. let's face it they're not going out there to further their education, it's to focus on their training and run VERY fast!!

Carey is an awesome runner he just seems to float across ground when he is running.

who's running the 800-1500 and 5k at loughborough this weekend?

How do these grad students have 2 years of NCAA eligibility. Isn't an undergrad degree 3 years in Europe?

Is the NCAA Clearinghouse rigidly checking this?

The best American distance runners are turning professional before they finish school. There is a gap left open because of this. Let the American pros run 3:34 and leave the NCAA far behind.